


Broken Spar and Tatter'd Sail

by Shinybug



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, First Kiss, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Head Shaving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:17:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinybug/pseuds/Shinybug
Summary: "Light a lamp, Captain," said Silver, and Flint did.Flint and Silver help each other through their transformations, looking for a light at the end, and a new beginning for both of them.





	Broken Spar and Tatter'd Sail

**Author's Note:**

> This was my contribution for Pride Month, written with the fervent hope that everyone, everywhere, will be able to find ourselves someday in a time when no one feels alone, and Know No Shame is the mantra spoken across the world.

~*~

Currents of starting a Continent new,  
Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,  
Fusion of ocean and land—tender and pensive waves,  
(Not safe and peaceful only—waves rous’d and ominous too.  
Out of the depths, the storm’s abysms—Who knows whence? Death’s waves,  
Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter’d sail.)

~Walt Whitman 

~*~

Those first days after waking to find himself less than a whole man, as a spit of land severed from the main by a swift and brutal storm, Silver learned that there were endless ways to be made and unmade and made again by fate and the sea.

He slipped seamlessly through the screaming pain of consciousness to the black cold relief of a sleep deeper than rest, and through it all he sensed someone next to him. It was a constant presence that in his fever he attributed to something supernatural, either an angel or a demon, though he had no faith of his own, nor belief in more than his senses could acknowledge in reality.

One particular morning he roused to the feeling of a cool cloth on his brow, felt the slide of water down his temple eclipsing the pain in his leg for the first time. Through the haze of eyes unused to focusing he saw the glow of sunlight from the east falling on a red beard above him, and he knew that color like he knew the color of his own hair.

“Captain,” he said, and his voice was nothing more than a hoarse rustle of dry leaves.

“Sleep,” said the captain, and Silver did, still marveling at seeing Flint so close, close enough to reach up and touch, had he been able to move.

Later, perhaps the same day or perhaps not, Silver broke the surface again at the sound of someone speaking softly, the cadence of the written word. He blinked and blinked, adjusting his eyes to lamplight and a beard cast by it into a different tone of gold. Flint was reading to him from a well-worn tome, seated in his chair faced toward the window seat where Silver lay.

_“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”_

Silver shook his head slowly. “To my memory Marcus Aurelius never lost a leg.”

Flint’s eyes snapped up to meet his, and Silver watched his irises expand and contract in the low light. “I...had not expected you to be awake. Or to be familiar with this book.”

“You were preaching to my subconscious then? I don’t know whether to be grateful or insulted.” He chose not to comment on how he knew of Meditations, as that was a story for a much different time.

Flint looked away and closed the book with a definitive thump. “To be honest, this book is like a weight on my chest. I was not sure I could read it again, and it was easier to imagine you were not listening.”

Silver struggled to sit up slightly, and was surprised to feel Flint adjusting the pillows behind him. His leg ached and stung, and he tried to heed the wisdom in the words that had awakened him. “I should not be surprised that you have the heart of a poet, and yet here we are.”

“I should say the same of you,” Flint replied, and his mouth twitched as though he might smile, but did not. “How is your pain?”

“I could use a drink or five.”

Flint retrieved a bottle and two cups, and poured Silver a healthy splash of rum. It was hot on his tongue and welcome as the sunshine. It was rare that he saw Flint so still and passive, but there seemed to be also a brittle, raw sadness in his eyes that had not been there before. Silver considered that as they drank together in silence.

“Something has happened since we last spoke, and I doubt it has anything to do with this,” he eventually said, gesturing to empty blankets where his leg should have been.

It took a long time for Flint to reply. “I have suffered a loss. The second great loss of my life.”

Silver’s heart contracted painfully. It was immediately clear who Flint had lost, without even saying her name. Flint had only ever formed a lasting attachment to one person, as far as Silver had seen. “I’m sorry.”

Flint shook his head. “You are not responsible.”

“Yet I am still sorry.”

Flint gave the barest nod of acknowledgement. It looked as though he had a wealth of words trying to shape themselves on his tongue, but he let not a single one escape. 

If there was one thing Silver could not abide it was silence, so to fill it he found himself telling his captain the half truth of the betrayal of the Urca gold. Flint's eyes lost their sadness and a hardened anger and disbelief replaced it. Silver was relieved to see it, both because in Flint’s eyes it was a more familiar look, but also because he seemed more at ease with the emotion. His shoulders abandoned their hunched aspect, rolling back as though preparing to face an enemy.

Silver felt a thrill of recognition. This was the Flint he knew.

Then Flint, almost as an afterthought, gave him the unexpected news that Silver had been promoted to quartermaster, which frankly felt surreal as he laid there with one leg and what felt like no realistic ability to fill that position. 

He supposed then that the two of them were each wrestling with their own grief and rage, utterly adrift, in their different ways.

~*~

After that day Silver faced the demon of lucidity as he learned to accept the constant pain in his leg, and the care he must take with it in order to heal. He continued to stay in the captain’s cabin, at Howell’s suggestion, because it was the cleanest place on the ship and the easiest to navigate now that his mobility was compromised.

At night he would lie awake on the window seat, sweat beading his brow as he fought to calm his body’s reflex to cry out, when his stump throbbed horribly and his muscles ached, twisted out of alignment as they were. Flint slept on his rope bed, swaying gently with the ship, and though he seemed to be sleeping like the dead, Silver had the peculiar feeling that Flint was awake more often that he was asleep.

They both had their particular demons, Silver reasoned, though neither gave them a voice in the darkness.

During the day Silver would hear the captain’s bellow on the deck, the sounds of the ship sailing as she was directed, and he longed to be up there, a part of it all. It took him by surprise, that feeling, because he’d never wanted to be a sailor, never liked the sea, and disliked taking orders from anyone least of all from Captain Flint.

Silver had little to do but be aware of the silence in the cabin and his own pain, his own thoughts. He had endless time to think about the crew's faith in him as a quartermaster and worry that he would give them cause to regret that faith. He was no better than a selfish charlatan at the best of times, making up the rules as he went along. And now minus one leg, how did they expect him to fulfill his duties? He thought of Randall, consigned to the role of cook, incapable of anything more useful. 

His thoughts ran in tedious circles, dragging him against his will, and he felt small and bleak, as though the color had washed away from him. 

After a few days of this he awakened one morning after Flint had crept out, and a book was at his side, a waiting gift. Every day a new book would appear, and Silver came to treasure them as he inhaled the words like breathing, a distraction offered by Flint with no expectation of reciprocity.

~*~

Flint appeared one day while Silver was attempting to wash his wound in clean water, struggling as always with the angle and the fresh pain. His breeches, shortened high on the left leg, were rucked up around his thigh, and Silver froze in mid-motion, water dripping from a cloth onto the captain’s floor.

“I apologize,” Flint said, and if he was startled or disgusted he certainly did not betray it. “I need to check a log.”

“It’s alright,” Silver replied. “This is your room after all.”

Flint stopped and looked up from the log he was flipping through on the desk. “It is yours as well, while you convalesce.”

“Oh,” Silver said faintly, and he felt his face flush. “Thank you, then.”

Flint closed the log and started for the door, then paused. “Do you...would you like some help with that?”

Silver blinked. “I, ah…” He fought with his uneasiness in letting anyone else see his disfigurement, and the fact that he truly could use the assistance. “Actually, yes, if you’re offering. Howell keeps nagging me to bathe the wound and I’m weary of telling him to fuck off.”

Flint pulled his chair over to the window seat and took the cloth from Silver. He dipped it in the bowl and wrung it out loosely, then took hold of Silver’s thigh with his left hand while he gently bathed the red seam of his stump. 

Silver closed his eyes against the sting and prickling numbness his disordered nerves provided him, biting hard on his lip when Flint passed over a particularly painful spot.

“You can cry out, if you need,” Flint murmured. “I won’t think less of you.”

Silver huffed a nearly delirious laugh. “It’s a matter of pride.”

“Fuck pride,” Flint said, sliding his grip higher on Silver’s thigh as he raised his leg in order to reach the underside of the stump.

It was a strange thing, Silver found, an incongruous thing to feel increased pain and simultaneously arousal. It was in spite of the pain, not because of it, but Silver felt his attention divided, and sought to focus on the pleasure of Flint’s hands on him instead of the otherwise unrelenting anguish.

He took deep breaths while he waged an internal battle, and he felt himself growing hard. At that close perspective Flint surely couldn’t help but notice, and Silver saw the flicker of his eyes to the bulge in Silver’s breeches and then back to his work. 

When Silver finally reached the limits of how much sensation he could handle at one time, he did in fact cry out, a hoarse gasping sound that brought tears to his eyes and also a measure of relief, to have given his torment a voice.

Flint’s face did something complicated, the barest twitch of his mouth and what appeared to be a resolution not to look Silver in the eye. He dropped the cloth in the bowl and gently eased Silver’s leg down to the blankets. His hands lingered on Silver’s thigh for a few beats longer than necessary, and Silver shuddered as he collapsed back onto the pillows, exhausted.

Neither of them acknowledged Silver’s arousal, or Flint’s reaction to it.

“It’s done,” Flint declared in a voice that scraped through his throat. He took the bowl away, presumably to discard the water. 

“Thank you,” Silver said, his chest heaving with panting breaths, as though he’d been running or fighting. He struggled to make sense of the chaotic shifting of his thoughts.“And...thank you also for the books. They’re a welcome distraction.”

Flint met his gaze finally, and his face was back to being unreadable. “Not at all. Someone should read them. You’re the only other person on the ship who could appreciate them as I do. A good book should never collect dust.”

Silver let his head fall back on a pillow. “Which is why I thank you.”

“You should leave this open to the air for a bit. Air helps the healing.”

Silver nodded mutely as Flint slid a pillow beneath his knee and arranged a blanket over Silver’s lap and chest, though he hadn’t been asked to do so.

“I’ll leave you now. Get some rest.”

Then he was gone, and Silver stared out the thick, bubbled glass of the nearest windowpane, wondering at the place that he and the captain were coming to. It was so far from where they had started that Silver shook his head in wonderment.

~*~

At Howell's suggestion Silver began to maneuver himself around the cabin with the use of a crutch and strategically placed furniture. It seemed like such a little thing, the ability to walk under his own power, to stand and piss in a bucket without assistance. To Silver it was everything, and his world regained some color, some hope. 

It did not appear that the captain had yet found any peace within himself. He prowled the ship like a caged animal, Howell reported to him one afternoon as he inspected Silver's wound. Flint was planning a series of inland raids, working himself up to some catastrophic explosion of rage, it seemed. 

Silver was all in favor of annihilating one's demons, but he was hesitant about the way Flint wanted to go about it. The crew shared his reservations, and appealed to him to intervene with the captain. 

Flint's war, as they were calling it, seemed to be a private one, and ought to stay that way. There was a big difference between a life of honest piracy and an all-out war with England, and good pirates would likely make terrible soldiers.

~*~

One afternoon Flint returned to his cabin in a dark mood. Silver watched him quietly, pretending to read the book in his lap. He slammed the door behind him, breathing hard, his red hair tossed free of its tie by the wind. Silver braced for some kind of rant about a crewmember, but though the captain paced from one side of the room seemingly without purpose, he didn't share his thoughts with Silver. 

Eventually Flint stopped as he passed the gilded mirror hung on the wall, staring at himself in the speckled mercury glass, eyes wild. He raked his fingers hard through his hair, scraping it back from his face. 

Silver couldn't tear his eyes away, and if Flint had even noticed he was in the room, there would have been no pretense left of reading his book. He wondered what the captain saw there in the glass, whether it was himself or someone else’s face.

He could tell the moment that Flint's focus narrowed in on a purpose, and then Flint pulled a knife from his belt with one hand, a hank of hair with the other, and before Silver could even blink Flint had sliced it from his head close to the scalp. 

"Captain!" Silver cried out, struggling to free himself from blankets and grab his crutch. "What the hell?" 

Flint glanced over briefly, then went back to sawing off his hair. "Sit down," he growled, continuing to cut. 

"I will fucking not," Silver replied as he swung upright, standing shakily. "Have you lost your mind? What are you doing?" 

"Cutting my hair, what's it look like I'm doing?" 

"It looks like you're trying to behead yourself." Silver hobbled awkwardly over to Flint, hoping that knife wouldn't be aimed at him next. 

Flint stopped and looked at Silver, and the look in his eyes wasn't murderous, it was desperate. "I need to do this. I need…" 

Silver, utterly bewildered, shook his head. "Alright, I don't understand why, but unless you want to accidentally scalp yourself with that knife, you need some help." He held his hand out for the knife, and after a long tense moment Flint gave it to him with a visibly shaking hand. 

"I need it gone," Flint said, finally finishing his thought. 

"Alright, just. Come here." Silver swung over to the desk and perched on the edge, adjusting his weight until his left leg wasn’t screaming at him. “Sit.”

Flint sat slowly in his chair, as though he wasn’t sure what was happening and he needed further explanation, which Silver did not give him.

Silver took his measure for a moment and decided that the rage from a few minutes ago had subsided, then he leaned his crutch against the desk. Flint looked like a madman with part of his hair already sliced away, ragged and sad looking. He reached out tentatively, and when Flint didn’t move away he ran his fingers through Flint’s hair, as he had wanted to do from the first moment he laid eyes on him.

It was soft, so soft, it was like sinking his fingers into fine sun-warmed sand. Flint closed his eyes and breathed. Silver let himself take a moment to mourn what was about to happen, because it was too late and the damage was done, the hair had to come off now.

Slowly he lifted the knife, and as gently as he could he sliced through those beautiful locks of hair. There had been so few times he had seen them freed from their severe leather tie, and now he would never get to enjoy the sight again. 

He continued cutting while Flint’s breathing evened out and his shoulders relaxed from their stiff comportment. Burnished red locks fell onto the floor and Flint’s lap, sliding away from the blade as smoothly as water.

“I miss her,” Flint whispered so quietly that had he not been seated in front of him, Silver might not have heard him. “Miranda.”

Silver swallowed hard, willing his hands not to tremble. Flint stared down at his own boots while Silver worked.

“She seemed like a woman worthy of being missed,” Silver finally offered, not knowing what else to say.

“She was worthy of far more than I gave her. I was her end.”

Silver stopped cutting. “I don’t know the truth of your relationship with her, but I saw how she looked at you, and I don’t believe she would have seen it that way.”

Flint’s lip curled in that smile of his that was not a smile. “As you say, you don’t know the truth. Not even half of it.”

Silver was nearly finished cutting, and already Flint looked so different from the man Silver called captain. It was a change in more than just appearance. “I happen to be a good listener.”

“You just want your curiosity satisfied, you shit,” Flint accused, but it lacked heat.

Silver wobbled his head in a ‘maybe yes, maybe no’ gesture. “I am also a good listener.”

Flint almost smiled, Silver was sure of it. “And what would you do with my truth? It’s as worthless to you as it is to me.”

“Perhaps I am simply a collector of stories, from anyone willing to share them. Perhaps I wish to call you friend, and your secrets are a barrier to that end. Perhaps I’m bored of my pain, and would like a distraction.” He set the knife down and brushed shorn hair from Flint’s shoulders, which tensed under his touch. “You choose.”

“I suspect,” Flint said, “that all three of those is true, to some extent at least.”

Silver sighed. “Bring me water, soap, and your straight razor.”

Flint arched an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t believe you ever beg anything from anyone, captain. Nevertheless, I need your straight razor to finish the hack job you started.”

Flint huffed in irritation, but retrieved the items. Silver readjusted himself on the desk, as his leg was beginning to hurt fiercely, and then invited Flint to sit down again and lean forward between Silver’s knees. If the position caused Silver’s heart to flutter and his blood to warm, well that was no one’s business but his.

He set about soaping Flint’s remaining hair and slowly, methodically, shaving him down to the skin. It was a private pleasure to hold Flint’s head in his hands like this, to feel the heat in Flint's skull, his breath gently warming Silver’s belly. He nudged Flint’s head down so that he could take the blade to the nape of his neck, and Flint’s forehead was nearly touching Silver’s thighs.

“There aren’t many men who I would allow this close to my neck with a blade,” Flint commented softly.

“Believe me, I’m aware.”

“I have no idea why I trust you, in light of your capricious loyalties.”

Silver shrugged, though Flint could not see it. “Currently I have an investment in making sure you look properly intimidating, and if I let you take care of this yourself you’d only succeed in looking ridiculous. So once again our purposes are aligned.”

“It’s a miracle,” Flint said dryly.

“You know, I’ve read that in many cultures around the world, it is customary to cut off one’s hair in mourning,” Silver said lightly after a minute. “It signifies a sacrifice to the memory of a loved one who is lost, and also a desire to feel the weight of grief lifted from one’s shoulders.”

Flint ran his fingertips over the knuckles of the other hand, then reversed them, over and over. In a lesser man it might have been called nervousness. “I loved her. I mourn her. That’s the simple truth.”

Silver’s mouth twisted ruefully as he swished the razor in the basin before setting again to his task. He didn’t want to feel disappointed at the simplicity of the answer, but the truth was that he was.

“I loved her, and I lost her, but then again she hadn’t ever been mine to lose, not really,” Flint continued, his voice like a hull scraped over a hidden sandbar. “She was my conscience and my confidante, but I was never able to give her even a fraction of what I gave him. Our lives were just shadows without him to give us form, to hold us together.”

Silver’s blade had stopped. “Who?”

Flint sighed, a long susurration of heat that reminded Silver that Flint was close enough to lean his head on Silver’s lap. “Her husband. Thomas.”

Silver made a soft ‘oh’ that had no sound to carry. The blood was pounding in his throat. Just the way Flint had said his name spoke volumes to Silver. Even without knowing the full story, Silver understood that the first great love and loss of Flint’s life had been a man named Thomas, and the second had been Miranda, and now Flint had become unmoored without them.

Flint seemed to be waiting for a reaction from Silver, who gave him none, but started the gentle scraping of the blade on Flint’s scalp once more.

“I’ve been carrying the weight of them for so long, I can barely stand,” Flint whispered. “I’ve mourned him for years, and I think I’ve been mourning her for nearly as long, even though she had not yet died. I burned down a city for them.”

“Captain,” Silver began, and then couldn’t finish. He laid his hand on Flint’s smooth head, running it over to feel for any missed places. Flint leaned into the touch and Silver let him for a moment, holding his head up against gravity. Silver dipped a cloth into the pitcher of clean water, and washed Flint clean of soap and hair, until his scalp shone bare and pale in the low light of the cabin.

Flint looked up at Silver, finally, the first time since they had begun. “I see her still, a bullet hole in her temple, her dress sodden with seawater, walking the deck, trying to warn me of something. I don’t want to see her anymore, it hurts too much. It hurts because I can’t stand the sight of her. It hurts because I never once saw him.”

Silver searched Flint’s eyes and saw only anguish there, and in the lines of his face, in the trembling of his upper lip. Without caring what kind of reaction he risked, he slid his hands down over Flint’s head to cradle his skull, to brace Flint’s jaw with his thumbs. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against Flint’s.

The captain made a startled sound, then his breathing hitched and his hands made fists in Silver’s shirt, hanging on like a drowning man. Silver held Flint upright while he silently cried.

When the worst was over, Flint looked drained, leached of all emotion. He wiped a shaking hand over his face and refused to look at Silver, who by contrast couldn't look away. Flint rose and poured clean water into another basin, stripped the shirt over his head, and sluiced water over his head and shoulders. 

When Flint straightened up he was another man. Silver took a deep breath and tried hard not to stare at Flint's bronzed, freckled skin, his pale scalp, his hard chest and broad shoulders. He felt like a voyeur while Flint strode to his sea chest and pulled out a fresh shirt, and lamented the disappearance of that view as Flint dressed again.

When he was done, Flint walked to the door with his back ramrod straight, no trace of the vulnerability of a few minutes ago. Still, he paused at the door as he opened it, gripping the doorframe. “Thank you,” he said softly, and closed the door behind him.

Silver took a shaky breath and looked down at the fallen locks of hair on the floor, like physical manifestations of grief. He awkwardly slid down from the table and crouched down, agonizingly difficult as he maintained his balance on one leg. He picked up one lock of hair, burnished gold in the ambient daylight through the windows. It was soft in his fingers, threatening to slide away, and Silver held on as one would hold a china teacup, delicately and with purpose.

He went to his own sea chest, now relocated to the captain’s quarters, and fished around until he found a thin cord of leather. With great care he tied the lock of hair with the leather and placed it in a small purse that held his coins, few though they were.

He felt a bit like a thief, but then it was a familiar state of being for Silver, and so he closed the chest and kept that piece of Flint for himself. It was a small sin, a slight violation, one that Silver cherished. No one need know.

Carefully Silver swept up the rest of the hair and gathered the basin of water that held the remains of soap, and discarded all of it through the open window above his bed. He watched the strands whip away, scattered to the winds, and hoped that Flint would take some measure of relief now, to temper his grief.

He wondered what the crew would see now, as Flint ascended the stairs and joined them on the upper deck, if they would see a changed man before them or just one who had decided a more severe look was in order. Silver could see that difference easily, and flattered himself that it was because he knew Flint better than most, now, and that settled warmly within his chest.

~*~

That night after supper, after all the tasks were completed and the ship moved silently through the water with the crew sleeping below decks like fish in the belly of a great whale, Flint returned to his cabin.

Silver waited quietly for Flint to address him, uncertain of what to expect. Flint looked at him steadily for a minute, then sighed and asked, “May I join you?”

“Only if you bring the rum,” Silver replied, his grin only slightly exaggerated.

Flint nodded and brought the bottle over, eschewing any cups, and sat on the opposite end of the window seat. He arranged his legs carefully so as not to interfere with Silver’s necessary sprawl, and crossed his legs at the ankles.

Silver watched him, trying to hide his surprise. Flint passed him the bottle first, and Silver gratefully accepted it. His stump was aching terribly, but because there were apparently limits to his thievery he refused to break into Flint’s stash while the captain was not there, so he was glad now to have something to ease his pain.

“About earlier…” Flint began, his gaze on his own hands in his lap.

“I was glad to help,” Silver interrupted. “I have my demons too, and I think it’s better to share with a friend than to hold it all inside and privately wait for it to fade.”

“Friends are we?” Flint looked amused.

“I told you we’d be friends someday.” He gave Flint his cheekiest smile, and Flint returned it with a sideways, lopsided grin that made Silver’s heart skip a beat.

“I suppose you’re right, then,” Flint replied, holding out his hand for the bottle. Silver watched him swallow, his throat moving, the shine of rum on his lips before he licked it away.

“Will you tell me about them?”

Flint sighed, rubbing his thumb over the rim of the bottle. It seemed like an eternity before his spoke.

“It began as an affair with her, condoned by her husband, and then turned into an affair with him. For a time, which was all too brief, we shared each other. I loved her, the way one loves a mirror for revealing ones beauties as well as ones flaws,” Flint said softly, looking out the darkened windows as though he could see the past instead of the opaque color of night, “but what I felt for him was so far beyond that. He was...part of me. He was beautiful like the sun. He showed me what it meant to be myself, beyond rank or propriety.”

Flint paused here, glancing at Silver and then back at the window. Silver hoped that the expression on his own face was one of open acceptance, but he was concerned that it might also hold an echo of longing, of jealousy.

“I remember their home as being filled with light and warmth,” Flint continued, “where everything was permitted and nothing was shameful. It was a golden time. When I entered their house I left everything else behind, and when I left it I would take up that mantle again, the dutiful officer who commanded men and upheld the law.”

Silver took the rum back, looking out the same window as Flint, hoping to see what he saw but also dreading it. He could imagine candlelight and music, gentle touches, Miranda’s smile. He had glimpsed it once while she was aboard ship, directed at Flint, and it had hurt him to watch. He had no image of her husband to complete the picture, but he imagined a man who radiated light, a teacher of an innocent, younger version of Flint. It was odd to think of Flint before he had become the hardened, rageful man he was now.

“So what happened?” Silver took a drink and handed the bottle back, and Flint had another swallow. He seemed to need it; his shoulders were tense and his brow was creased with memory.

“His father discovered us. What we had done. What we were. I was dismissed from the navy, and Miranda and I were banished together. Thomas was committed by his father to Bethlem hospital, citing grief over his wife’s affair with me. He...did not survive it.”

Silver raised a shaky hand to his chest, rubbing away the stubborn ache there. “And here you are now. How far you’ve come, James Flint.”

Flint looked at him with steady eyes. “My name was James McGraw,” he said softly, little more than a whisper.

“João da Silva,” Silver replied, extending his hand to shake. “Prazer em conhecer você.”

After a long moment Flint gave him a little smile and clasped his hand firmly. “Well met, my friend. Should I call you da Silva now?”

“No more than I would call you McGraw. I left that name behind long ago, as I suppose you did as well.”

Flint nodded, his expression rueful. “That man died when Thomas did.”

“I am sorry for it. Resurrecting oneself is a painful thing. You never know what you might return as.”

“I don’t believe that Thomas would recognize me now. I’m certain he wouldn’t approve of the rage in me, though it is intrinsically part of the man I’ve become.” Flint looked lost for a moment, but it passed quickly.

“You fight for his memory, don’t you?”

“I fight for the right to have loved him.”

Silver shifted on the bench, trying to ignore the pain in his leg. Something was bothering him, and it felt important. Perhaps important enough to brave the captain’s anger for telling him. 

He cleared his throat and made himself meet Flint’s eyes. “Forgive me, but I don’t see how waging war on England for a free Nassau will defend the right to love. It makes me think that you’re going about it the wrong way.”

Flint blinked at him, taken aback, and was silent long enough for Silver to become apprehensive. Finally Flint shook his head. “I don’t believe anyone has spoken to me that way since Gates. Since Miranda.”

“I will take that as a compliment. What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t speak my mind to you?” His leg was insistently throbbing now, and he absently rubbed his thigh where it cramped. He tried hard to focus on more carefully guarding his words, but pain and rum and Flint’s eyes were disorienting him.

“Perhaps in truth I need more friends like you.” Flint flashed a grin at him, one that made Silver return the smile in relief that Flint seemed to have shed his melancholy, at least a little.

“Now why would you need more friends when you have me?” Silver asked cheerfully, though that cheer was only a mask, because what he was truly thinking was, _‘You have me, I’m yours.’ ___

____

____

The smile slowly disappeared, but the warmth in his eyes remained. “Yes, perhaps you are all I need.”

Silver suddenly felt short of breath, his chest aching and bright. He hadn’t meant for it to go this far, and couldn’t be sure that he and Flint were on the same page, or in fact even in the same book. Flint was clearly attracted to men, but it didn’t follow that Flint would naturally be attracted to Silver. He needed to proceed very, very carefully now so as not to upset the balance they’d managed to create.

He told himself that friendship was enough, and yet he still felt an impulse to hold on to Flint for selfish reasons, as he did when he stole the lock of his hair. This was a bloody, dangerous profession, and it was a miracle Flint was still alive. Silver hadn't felt such an attachment to another person in years, if ever, and he feared what would happen to himself if Flint were to sacrifice his life in the name of a nebulous cause. 

"Could you walk away from it all? The life, the sea, the gold, all of it? Is there any inducement powerful enough to persuade you?" Silver wasn't sure what made him ask, but he found he suddenly needed to know. 

Flint frowned and fixed him with a hard stare. "All those things are a means to an end, and without that end I am nothing."

"Is your aim revenge, or redemption?" He tried not to fidget under that burning gaze. 

"Why not both?" 

"Frankly I don't see any scenario in which you survive either, much less both. And I find I'm invested in your survival. I'd rather see you alive than see you lose your life screaming into the storm." 

"You see my goals as fatally flawed?" 

"No, only your methods." 

Flint looked fiercely conflicted, his mouth pursed and his eyes reflecting a fathomless sadness, and Silver regretted bringing it up. 

He cleared his throat. “I’m feeling that rum now, and my leg is telling me to go to sleep.”

Flint nodded, and Silver didn’t know if that was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes or not. “I should sleep as well. Perhaps tonight I will truly sleep, and not lie awake alone with my thoughts.” He carefully unfolded himself from the window seat and Silver caught his hand as he passed.

“You’re not alone,” Silver said simply.

Flint looked down at their joined hands for a long moment, then squeezed gently. “Neither are you.”

Flint blew out the lamps and they settled into their respective beds. Silence descended like fog through the room. Silver felt both relieved and full of longing, and it was a long time before he slept.

~*~

Despite the relaxing effects of the rum, Silver woke in the middle of the night with a terrible cramping in his thigh, as well as an awful tingling that seemed to be radiating down past his stump through a limb that was no longer there. He gritted his teeth and twitched his leg, trying to shake off the persistent feeling, but the pain and anxiety grew until a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan escaped him.

He heard Flint shift on his bed and looked over to see him sitting up in the dark. “Sorry, go back to sleep,” Silver said softly, grabbing his leg, determined not to make another sound.

“Is it your leg?”

“Sometimes it cramps, it will pass. I’m used to it by now.”

He heard Flint sigh and then there was the thump of his bare feet on the floor. “Don’t be a martyr, Silver. It doesn’t suit you.”

Silver wanted to reply, but the pain was so intense that all he could do was writhe on his bed and try not to scream.

“Jesus,” Flint said, coming to his side and leaning over, and Silver could only guess at what Flint saw in his face. “What can I do to help?”

Silver wrestled for a moment with feeling ashamed of needing help and feeling desperate enough to accept it, and eventually he said, “There’s an unguent that Howell gave me, it’s for the cramping.” He retrieved the jar from the windowsill and handed it to Flint. “If you could just…” But he couldn’t finish the thought; any way he phrased it sounded too intimate.

Flint lit one lamp and turned it low, so that there was just enough light to see by. He sat on the bench in front of Silver and surveyed the situation.

“You’ll have to take these off,” he said gruffly, indicating Silver’s trousers. “If you want it done properly.”

“Yes, alright.” Silver was actually beyond propriety, his pain was so great. He didn’t even hesitate to unbutton the flap and shift his hips to pull the trousers off. He did pull his shirt down over his groin, but it was more of an afterthought.

Flint uncorked the jar and dipped his fingers in, rubbing them together to warm the oil. He hesitated slightly before taking Silver’s thigh in his hands, smoothing gently down toward his knee. “Tell me what to do.”

“I need help working out the tension so I can relax.” He grabbed for his thigh as a reflex and encountered Flint’s hands already there, and their fingers slipped together.

“Silver,” Flint said admonishingly, “let go.”

Silver did so, and Flint’s hands slid around his thigh, spanning it with hard, calloused fingers. His thumbs dug into the muscles there and shifted until Silver felt them give way. He groaned and clutched the blankets below him, instinctively trying to escape the pain and also knowing this was what he needed.

When the worst of the cramping had been massaged into submission, Silver collapsed back onto the pillows. He wanted to say ‘thanks for helping, you can go back to bed now’ but the words stuck in his throat. The truth was that it had been so very long since anyone had touched him with tenderness, that he didn’t want it to stop.

“Is this working?” Flint’s voice sounded rough, but not with impatience.

“Yes,” Silver sighed. “It’s starting to ease up. My calf hurts too, but there’s nothing to be done for that.”

Flint looked down at the place where his leg stopped, above the calf. He trailed his fingers down to the stump itself. “Can I work here?”

Silver bit his lip. “You can try. I haven’t been brave enough to do it. You’ll need to be very gentle.”

Flint dipped his fingers into the jar again and they came out dripping oil. He slid his fingers over the end of the stump, careful of the seam of scar tissue there. “They call it phantom limb. You still feel it after it’s gone, like an echo.”

Silver sucked air in through his teeth and braced for pain that never really came. It was tender, but Flint’s hands didn’t trigger any spasms. In fact, the sensation seemed to be helping ease the pain of his missing limb. He let all the air in his lungs out in a rush. “Thank you.”

He flung a hand over his eyes, feeling them prickle with hot tears and trying to prevent everything from spilling out at once. “How can I function like this? How can I possibly serve as anything but a cook here anymore?”

“I refuse to let you anywhere near the kitchen. You’ll just have to be stronger than this pain, and carry on.”

“You don’t know how it feels. I don’t know how to go on.”

Flint gathered more oil on his hands and returned them to Silver’s thigh again, and this time the pressure felt good, like true relief.

“You’re right, I don’t know. But I do know what it’s like to look at your life and see no future, no way to survive the pain you feel.”

Silver twitched within Flint’s hands. That curious feeling of pleasure alongside pain was returning, and he had a suspicion that Flint knew that too. He could feel the press of every one of Flint’s ten fingers on his skin, shifting, seeking. “So what do we do, then?”

Flint was quiet for a minute, and his hands moved higher. “I believe Miranda would say we should live one day at a time. Refuse to let our losses define us. Remember that we are not alone.”

“Flint,” Silver said, his voice hoarse. “Please.”

Flint’s hands were moving again, his right hand cupping Silver’s hip, his thumb finding the divot of his hip bone. His left hand slid beneath the hem of Silver’s shirt, slick fingers slipping up over his balls to grasp his hardening cock in a sure grip.

“It’s a little late to ask you if I was reading you right,” Flint said as Silver flung his head back into the pillows, “but although I’m fairly certain of my welcome I will ask it anyway.”

“I may be short one leg, but if I didn’t want you here I could have made sure you weren’t.” Silver got his fist on Flint’s shirt and tugged until Flint’s mouth hovered over his.

It felt like an eternity before Flint closed the distance and touched his mouth to Silver’s in a kiss that was nearly chaste. The fact that his hand was still on Silver’s cock made the whole situation somewhat surreal.

Flint’s lips were trembling as they kissed, sweet with rum, and his hand seemed frozen there, gripping lightly, unmoving. Silver opened his mouth and licked just inside Flint’s upper lip, urging him on, and suddenly Flint was released into motion, surging against Silver, guiding the evolution of the kiss into something wild.

Flint kissed like a starving man, hard enough to hurt, teeth biting and tongue curling, sliding his free hand around the nape of Silver’s neck and gripping his curls to guide Silver’s head where he wanted it. Silver could do nothing but moan and twist his hips up into Flint’s slick fist, overcome with a sensation of burning brightness, a twin to the pain in his leg but the polar opposite of it as well. He felt helpless, but he welcomed it this time, because he knew that wherever Flint led him, he wanted to go.

“I want...I need you to…” Silver tried, but failed to decide what he needed much less to articulate it. He panted against Flint’s cheek like he’d been swimming against the current, seeking a lifeline.

“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you speechless,” Flint said, sounding just as desperate. He maneuvered himself up onto the window seat, kneeling between Silver’s legs. He guided Silver’s bare thighs up to grip his hips, eager but still careful of Silver’s stump, even then, for which Silver felt gratitude alongside pure lust at having Flint between his legs.

“That sounds like a challenge, captain,” Silver replied, squeezing gently and watching Flint’s eyes darken. “I could tell you how beautiful you look right now, how I’ve never wanted someone as badly as I want you, how after this I will never remember anyone else who has been here before you. I could tell you how I long for you to fill me up and tear down my defenses, how I long to have you in my mouth--"

Flint gave a heaving gasp and squeezed his own hardness through his breeches, eyes closed as he pulled himself back from the edge. "You'll be the death of me, Silver." 

Silver grinned, feeling drunk on power. "Maybe, captain, but not today." 

Gazing at him with eyes that burned, Flint wasted no time in stripping off his shirt, tearing open his pants and pulling himself out with a sigh, leaning down to give Silver a kiss that promised everything he'd longed for. His cock pressed against Silver’s, hot as a forge and hard as iron. 

Silver reached up and ran his hands over Flint's smooth scalp and down across wide, freckled shoulders, enjoying the way Flint shuddered with the sensation. He held on until Flint pulled back and thrust against him, grinding with purpose. 

"Fuck," Silver said feelingly. 

"Not tonight," Flint growled, "as I don't believe either of us would last. I can give you the next best thing." He dipped his fingers into the jar of oil again and brought his hand back dripping over both their cocks. 

"Prove it," Silver challenged, and Flint did. 

He took their cocks together in one hand, building up a rhythm like waves, thrusting against Silver and holding his gaze. There was relief there, and desire, a more intimate feeling that almost didn't match what they were doing. 

It made Silver think that perhaps they were on the same page after all. 

Then Flint was pulling Silver’s hand and replacing his own on their cocks, and with wide eyes Silver took over. Before he could guess what was happening, Flint ran his oiled fingers down over Silver’s hole and slipped the tip of one just inside. 

Silver clenched around him and came with a shout, throwing his head back, riding that massive crashing wave and nearly missing Flint’s own finish. 

In the wake of everything, Flint half collapsed on top of Silver, then carefully levered himself up and away. It was no less than Silver had expected, but it stung nevertheless.

“What the hell just happened?” Flint asked softly, running his hand over his newly shaved head and not looking at Silver.

There were several things that came into Silver’s head just then, and most of them were quips that he would have had no problem uttering, had the person in Flint’s place been anyone else. Once again he decided to lean on honesty, that unfamiliar mistress.

“I believe we just tried to convince ourselves that we are not alone.”

Flint glanced at him while buttoning his trousers. “Did it work?” 

“Well,” said Silver, “while I cannot speak for you, I’d say I feel far less alone now.”

Flint gave a little huff, no doubt thinking that Silver was being flippant.

Silver softened his tone. “The sex was lovely, and I think we both were in need of it. But I am not alone anymore, and I know that because of the company and discourse we’ve shared. Anyone can have sex. I’m more grateful for your friendship.”

Flint cleared his throat twice, and when he spoke he sounded more gruff than usual. “Good. That’s good. I believe I feel the same.”

“I’d be grateful for a cloth to clean up with as well,” Silver said with a smirk, because he couldn’t help himself.

“Cheeky bastard,” Flint muttered, pouring a little water onto a clean rag and flinging it at Silver.

~*~

In the end they slept separately, Silver on the window seat and Flint on his rope bed. It made more sense from several perspectives, though Silver still missed all that newly discovered skin next to his. He wanted to know what it was like to feel him breathing in sleep. 

~*~

The next morning, despite Silver’s every intention of waking early, Flint had crept from the cabin by the time Silver opened his eyes.

For the first time since the loss of his leg, Silver dressed with the goal of leaving Flint’s room. The crutch was a necessary evil, but he glared at it anyway as he retrieved it and braced it under his arm. He ached everywhere, and his stump burned like an itch that could not be scratched, but he made his way to the door anyway.

The stairs were a hurdle he’d not anticipated, but John Silver was nothing if not tenaciously stubborn, he told himself. If he couldn’t join his crew like this, he had no right to call himself their quartermaster.

By the time he reached the deck he was panting like he’d been through a battle. Because fate was frequently unkind, Howell was the first to spot him and came to hover at his side like a mother hen. One fierce look from Silver had the protestations dying on his lips. By that time the crew had gathered around him, cheering and clapping him on the shoulders, nearly shaking him from his balance in their exuberance.

It made his heart hurt to see their faces, overjoyed and relieved, ready to support him should he fall. Silver mustered the strength to nod and thank them, but the smile on his face was strained. He had no desire whatsoever to be coddled.

Although he had never sought the profession and least of all enjoyed it, Silver was a pirate. No pirate who was ever pitied or protected by his brothers deserved the name, nor lived very long.

Flint was watching the sea, his hands clasped behind his back, and only the slightest quirk of his mouth let on that he knew Silver had joined him. Silver leaned carefully against the rail beside him.

“Captain,” he said.

“Silver,” Flint replied. “You’re up.”

“It would appear so, yes.” He paused to take Flint’s measure before hesitantly saying, “I had a particularly good night of sleep.”

Flint began to grin, then covered it quickly by smoothing his beard. “As did I.”

“I believe that sleeping in your cabin is beneficial to my recovery. I do hope you’ll allow me to stay awhile.”

“I wouldn’t wish to set you back,” Flint assured him with amusement. “Your recovery is paramount in the crew’s thoughts. I find I cannot move forward with any plans until you are with us.”

Silence fell between them and Silver inhaled deeply of the salty air, finding that he had missed it. He could feel himself both exhilarated and exhausted, and he knew he had reached his limit of current strength.

“I need to return to bed,” Silver murmured. “I wouldn’t mind if you joined me later, at your leisure.”

Flint nodded. Never once had he looked directly at Silver, and Silver was glad of it. He wasn’t sure he could have kept his face from betraying some manner of tenderness that he had no desire to share with the crew.

Very slowly Silver made his way back to Flint’s cabin, shaking off any well-meaning offers of help from the crew. When he reached his bed he fairly collapsed upon it, letting his chest heave and his weariness show. Sweat cooled his brow and he knew that if he could have seen his own face he would have found it pale.

Still, it was progress, and he was pleased with it. His stump throbbed with his racing blood, but it did not prevent him from slipping into a light sleep.

~*~

When Flint finally returned that evening Silver was reading Meditations by the light of the sunset through the windows. He did not miss the twitch of Flint’s expression, the flicker of pain in his eyes, but Silver didn’t ask about it. He'd noted the inscription in the front. If Flint wished to explain, he would, in his own time. Regardless, he did not voice any objections either, so Silver simply turned the page.

He also did not miss how Flint carefully bolted the door against intruders.

After a while Flint joined him on the bench just as he had the night before, and as before he brought the rum. Silver set the book aside on the sill, and Flint reached out to touch the spine gently with his fingers. He then dropped his hand to rest lightly on Silver’s right knee, and the heat from his hand warmed Silver through.

They passed the rum silently for a few minutes, and Silver relaxed into the feeling of companionship. There seemed to be no restlessness in the captain now, no caged animal pacing to be released. It gave Silver hope that nothing was ever too far gone to be recovered.

“You said something last night,” Flint said softly.

Silver sighed. “I’m not sure you should ever put too much stock in what I say while drunk or in pain. Or in lust.”

Flint raised an eyebrow at him. “About my going about this the wrong way. What did you mean?”

“Oh.” Silver rested his hand over Flint’s on his leg. “I suppose I meant--if you are fighting a war for love, how does it follow that such a thing is best served by rage or hate?”

Flint nodded, not necessarily in agreement but in acknowledgement. “Miranda thought I was fighting for the sake of fighting, because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

"By all accounts she was a wise woman, but I think she was only half right." 

Flint smiled sadly. "Which half?" 

"Well, I believe," Silver said gently, "that you are capable of far more than rage, as I imagine you were once a long time ago."

"You perceive a great deal in me. I don't know if it is warranted by what I've shown you so far." Flint appeared to be examining his silver rings, for lack of anything safer to look at. 

"On the contrary, I think I've seen in you the very opposite of rage, as well as the desire to explore that feeling." 

Flint gave a hard exhalation and frowned. "What would you have me do, then, if not wage war against those who took everything from me based on nothing more than a belief that the way we loved was an abomination?" 

Silver twisted his hand with Flint’s until he could weave their fingers together.

"Let me be clear. I'll follow you to whichever end you choose. But I believe that you would defy their hatred best by allowing yourself to love, and to live that life in spite of them. Your love is what has brought you here to this moment. Let it be the reason you walk away."

In the rapidly darkening room Flint's eyes shone wet when he finally looked Silver in the face. "Are you applying for the position of walking away with me?" 

Silver grinned. "Well I've only one leg to walk with, but I think I can manage. If you'll have me." 

"It wasn't all that long ago that you swore to me you were only in this as far as the gold was concerned. Would you have me believe you'd walk away from the gold entirely?" 

Silver lifted their joined hands and leaned forward to touch his mouth to Flint’s knuckles. "It wasn't all that long ago that I had no friends, either. I suppose we make different choices when we believe we are alone in the world." 

Flint swallowed hard and cleared his throat, looking at Silver’s mouth and then away. 

"Now that you're not alone, would you consider steering a different course? There's so much to discover out there. So much more than you've let yourself see." Silver held his breath, wanting so many things from Flint that he ached with the possibilities. 

"I'll consider it," Flint whispered. He disentangled himself from Silver and rose from his seat. 

Silver caught his arm and drew Flint down for a kiss that did not steal from him, but made promises instead, and then Silver released him. Flint blinked slowly, touching Silver’s hair lightly with one finger. 

"Light a lamp, Captain," said Silver, and Flint did.


End file.
